A Hole In The World

Faye Yager reaches for a bottle of wine. She's breaking out the ``good stuff'' tonight, and damned if everybody here don't deserve it.

Honey, she's been plotting this wedding all week, and there isn't a single detail she's missed.

``When it's your wedding, you want everything perfect,'' she says, her voice sugary with the backwoods twang of her West Virginia roots.

The guests are due any minute. Faye's staff here at the Inn at Brevard, in the foothills of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, fuss through the Victorian rooms. Faye, the inn owner, bustles after them, arranging hors d'oeuvres, tweaking flowers, straightening tablecloths.

In a faded blue dress and a long apron, she belies her past image.

Anyone who knows her story, knows the pictures, the television footage: Faye, dressed to the nines, hair upswept, the chic brim of a hat shielding her face as she greets reporters.

This evening, her auburn hair's piled in a loose bun, her face is smooth and open, her smile shy. She is soft now. Tamed.

Is this the same woman who stared down federal judges, went head-to-head with the FBI and bedeviled authorities for years by hiding runaway women and children in an international underground organization?

Yes, it is, and she's concerned right now that there aren't enough cocktail napkins. ``You're gonna need more of these,'' she tells a busboy, and he scampers back to the kitchen.

Out on the stone patio, the deejay is warming up. Frank Sinatra's crooning away: I get no kick from champagne/Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all ...

The setting sun casts a mellow glow over the landscaped yard. Goldfish glimmer and flash in a stone pond. Tulips line the path to the 19th-century bed and breakfast in this woodsy town where Faye has come to change her life.

``Have you seen the cake?'' she asks, showing off a layered masterpiece of ivory frosting and lavender blossoms she baked herself. She bakes all the inn's cakes. She chooses all the flowers by hand.

With her husband, Howard, an Atlanta doctor, she bought the Inn in 1997, and since then she's spent her days renovating and decorating the place.

But there's one vestige of the past dogging her. One last lawsuit to contend with. A guy from Connecticut named Jeffrey Rubenstein is still trying to nab her. This Rubenstein wants his son back. He's waited five years to drag Faye into court and force her to cough up the whereabouts of his ex-wife and 8-year-old boy, and this summer he's going to have his chance.

If Faye is worried, you'd never know it.

Once described as ``striking,'' with her fine features and dramatic style, at 52, she is still very attractive. A little tired around the edges, it's true, but humor gleams in her blue eyes. Get her talking, and the old bravado emerges.

Southern hospitality aside, Faye Yager still loves a good fight. Just not tonight.

``The limo is coming,'' someone calls from the porch. And the long, black car snakes up alongside the Inn. The bride and groom emerge. They walk hand-in-hand to the patio. The guests erupt in applause.

Then the drinks are flowing. The bride, beaming. All the pieces are falling into place. It's a perfect beginning to a perfect evening. At least it looks like one.

Jeffrey Rubenstein had a big wedding, too. The family, the friends, the festivity. He'll tell you all about it. He'll describe the doubts and warning signs he chose to overlook. He'll tell you anything if it'll help him get his son, Randy, back.

At 41, he lives alone in a house clearly meant for a family. Tucked back in a wooded Waterford neighborhood, with an ample yard and trees to climb, there is a pervasive emptiness here. The furnishings are sparse. A steel weightlifting machine dominates the family room like a bizarre, misplaced chunk of sculpture.

Jeffrey redid his bedroom recently -- in racy jungle prints only a single man could choose -- at his mother's sugges- tion, to try to boost his spirits. He shows it off quickly, then hustles to his work room and his computer.

He fires up the computer and heads immediately for websites on abducted children. He knows them all. Then he remembers there's something else he needs.

Across the hall, in Randy's bedroom, Jeffrey opens the closet and pulls out a box. He drops to his knees and begins digging through the jumbled contents. ``Oh, here's some wedding photos,'' he says, rolling his eyes, pushing the snapshots aside in disgust. He's searching for a piece of paper to prove what a liar his ex-wife, Bonnie, is.

He pulls it triumphantly from a stack.

It's his marriage license, dated June 21, 1992, issued in New London. On it, Bonnie and Jeffrey both indicate this is their first marriage.

But after his divorce was final, Jeffrey discovered another marriage license issued to Bonnie, this one in the town of East Lyme, on Sept. 20, 1986. She married a Navy sailor named James Segal. Another first marriage.

It's an appalling lie to tell the man you're marrying, but nothing compared to the whopper Jeffrey says Bonnie told in 1997 after she defied a Connecticut court's custody ruling, took off with Randy, and hooked up with Faye Yager in Atlanta.

She called Jeffrey a child molester. Said he'd sexually abused Randy, then 3 years old. And, for good measure, she claimed Randy's gray-haired grandfather, Sam, and Uncle Rick abused the boy, too.

It seems the Rubenstein family tree was turning out nothing but child molesters.

That's what Faye Yager believed when she agreed to hide Bonnie and Randy in Children of the Underground, the organization she ran for 10 years.

Jeffrey has no idea where his son is today.

Faye says she's ushered thousands of women and children into the Underground, though critics say the actual number is much lower, perhaps only several hundred. The Underground provides runaways with phony passports, ID papers, relocation, all the tools to build a new life.

Rubenstein sums up Bonnie's allegations: ``She's nuts.'' Five years later, he still can't get over the molestation charges.

He heard them for the first time on an episode of the NBC television program ``Dateline'' in 1998. Randy had been missing almost a year when the show did a piece on Children of the Underground, and Faye allowed a reporter to interview Bonnie and Randy in Belgium.

Jeffrey's a trim man, wearing blue jeans and a mint green oxford shirt. He wastes little time with banter, preferring to get to the point. He begins rehashing scenes, citing dates, firing off accusations, promising always to corroborate his claims with ``documentation.''

Grief and this long struggle have consumed Jeffrey Rubenstein.

He lives just 10 minutes from his parents, Sam and Phylaine; his brother, Rick; Rick's wife and two children. The family is well known in the New London area. They own Marcus Jeans, a landmark downtown clothing store. Rick and his family live next door to Sam and Phylaine.

``I filed for divorce in March 1996. In September 1997 I was awarded full custody,'' Jeffrey says, reciting his pain- staking litany. The divorce was finalized in December, but by then Bonnie was on the run.

``She had never made any sexual abuse allegations,'' Jeffrey says.

Not until she hooked up with Faye Yager.

And that was just the beginning. The Rubenstein family's five-year odyssey has pitted them not only against Yager, but also the federal court system, local police, the FBI, international extradition laws and a shadowy world where children disappear, sometimes never to be seen again.

It's also an expensive world. Travel, lawyers, investigators. The family has sunk about $300,000 into the search for Randy. ``When I ran out of money, my father took over,'' Jeffrey says.

Without Harry Boardsen, the hard-hitting private investigator and architect of the plan to recover Randy, the Rubensteins could never have negotiated this complex web of characters. Not to mention the frustrating roadblocks. Prime among them, according to Boardsen, has been the failure by both local police and the FBI to pursue this case aggressively.

On this spring night, Jeffrey has just returned from a legal consultation in Atlanta. His $90 million lawsuit accusing Yager of hiding Randy is set to be heard in July.

Randy's bedroom remains unchanged since the day the 3-year-old disappeared. His clothes are still in the bureau. His Green Bay Packers bedspread covers his little bed. His pennants and posters hang on the walls.

He was also a budding ice hockey player, Jeffrey says proudly.

``Just when I was starting to get him on the ice, he disappeared,'' he says. ``When he gets back here, he'll learn.''

She comes through the front door of her inn on a warm April afternoon, full of apologies for being late.

Whooey. What a day. She's been at the county courthouse just down the street, wrangling with court clerks again. She drops onto the couch in the inn's reception area.

``I told the clerk of the court last week ... I told her, her cohorts that she appointed [are unqualified] ... and I said, by the way, I want an application to be one of these judges. She said, `We're not hiring right now.' And I said, `Well, I think I'll just fill it out in case one dies.' '' Faye breaks into giggles. ``It ticks her off. Every time I go down there, they just get crazy.''

She's laughing, but she hasn't slid pain-free into life in Brevard.

Petulant brides have sued over wedding reception details; workers have screwed up renovation jobs and sued when she refused to pay them. The local paper tries to dig up dirt on her, she says, and some people have given her a hard time over her uppity inn.

Just sour grapes, she says.

``You know, we don't serve cheap dinners. I'm not serving cheap dinners here. And they're mad about that. A lot of them in town want to come down and eat lunch for $7,'' she says.

One engaged couple scouting out sites for their wedding reception wanted to know what $10 per guest would get them. Faye told her chef, who she says replied, ``You can tell them popcorn and Coke.'' She breaks into laughter again.

In a light spring dress and flat sandals, she's relaxed, but tired. She's happy to stroll down Memory Lane, but it's clear the original trip took a lot out of her. A self-described ``bitch on wheels'' at one time, Faye today watches her words.

She once infamously described how she helps women by saying, ``Basically I give them a course on how to break the law and get away with it.''

Flashes of the old Faye still shine through today. Just get her talking about child molesters and incompetent judges.

``These judges on the bench, they have no idea what they're doing,'' she says. ``They're on these benches and they make these decisions about these kids and half of them have no education, no background. They don't even know what child abuse is.''

But please, all that was her previous life. A wistful note creeps into her voice. ``If I had my druthers, I'd rather be helping the children now,'' she says. ``I didn't quit the Underground, what I did was just quit being the front person on it. The Underground still exists.''

Is she actively involved?

``I can't answer that,'' she says.

Her critics--make that her ``enemies'' and there's a lot of them--say she is. Next to wanting Randy back, the Rubensteins want more than anything for the FBI to arrest Faye Yager. She knows where Randy is, they claim. She's always known.

After Bonnie fled, New London County State's Attorney Kevin Kane issued a warrant for her arrest on charges of first-degree custodial interference. The FBI issued a warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

But in Brevard, these accusations echo a faraway drama. Faye came here from Atlanta in 1997 after running the Underground for ten years.

What drove her out? She'll tell you it was just time. The work had become too much; she'd been trying to leave for years. Other people will tell you it was Bipin Shah, the Philadelphia millionaire, whose ex-wife and two little girls Faye hid in 1997.

A self-made banker and inventor of the ATM machine, Shah vowed to destroy Faye's operation, waved a $2 million reward in the air and drew bounty hunters from around the world.

Faye says she was harassed mercilessly. ``In Atlanta, I was like a sitting duck,'' she says. ``People threatened to kill my husband. All kinds of stuff. It was horrible.''

Hold on, though. No one tells Faye Yager what to do.

Listen up: Howard and she had owned 100 acres in Brevard for years and were planning to move here anyway. Most of her children--she has five--had left the nest. She and Howard were rattling around with just one child left in their eight-bedroom, eight-bathroom Atlanta mansion.

Pictures of the children are dotted around the walls and tables surrounding her. Smiling, mugging for the camera, bright faces, standing with Faye and Howard at family functions. It all looks so normal.

Faye sips from a cobalt-blue wine glass. She leans back, one hand resting on the scrolled wooden couch frame. The staircase behind her leads to the guest rooms, each one richly outfitted in Victorian flourishes. A massive crucifix hangs at the top of the stairs. Paintings fill the walls, everything from gauzy pastoral scenes to a windswept Jesus Christ walking on water. There is no single theme, other than luxury, tempered with piety.

Bipin Shah's not responsible for the creation of this place. No sir.

Anyway, he got his girls back. In 1999, as the two-year anniversary of their disappearance neared, he and Faye cut a deal. It's a sealed deal, so don't ask about it.

``I feel like there's so many misconceptions and lies out there about me. You know, I never hung a shingle out there. I never took a dime from any of these women,'' Faye says. ``They think I'm biased against the men, and yet 30 percent of the people I helped have been men. That's the biggest misconception.''

Ratting out women when the legal heat gets too hot, taking payment from them in the form of possessions and hiding them without first verifying their claims of child molestation are the usual accusations hurled at Faye.

And, of course, coercing children into making bogus molestation charges, so Mommy will have a legal bomb to lob at Daddy.

``I know some cases where she talked kids into saying they were satanically abused,'' says Charles Pickett, a senior case manager at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va., who has had numerous run-ins with Faye over the years.

Pickett describes the Underground as a loosely connected network of safe houses, churches and women's shelters that help women and children on the run.

Faye has an answer for those who accuse her of accepting women with no proof.

``That's an absolute lie,'' she says. ``In fact, one day they'll release those FBI files on me, and you'll find then, when I found out a woman had lied to me, they were turned in.''

The FBI did arrest Faye in 1990, and charged her with kidnapping. When the case went to trial two years later, she beat the rap.

``One thing you'll learn about me is I'm a very documented person. I document everything. I don't just fly off the handle. And that's one thing, when they arrested me and I ended up in the courtroom two years later, every single case that they dug up, I had a notebook like that -- files, drawings, pictures, I had their court records, their medical records.''

``They had to prepare a notebook with every document in it, every medical report. If there was domestic violence, I had to have a copy of all police reports and it had to be put in a book fashion and it had to have an index. I mean, I had to have all my facts before I would even see them.''

Observers say the FBI flubbed the case. Plus, they say, Faye Yager has important friends in Atlanta, and it was impossible to get an impartial jury.

``It was like the O.J. case,'' one critic says.

Whatever the truth, the FBI doesn't scare Faye Yager.

``You know, they're the laziest damn bunch of people,'' she says. ``They work 9 to 5. Anything you want to do, do it after 5.'' She cracks up.

``When the truth finally gets told, they'll find out that the safe houses were the law enforcement. The very people that were supposed to be protecting these kids were the ones sending them to me. How about that one? The DAs, the lawyers. If they tried to prosecute the child molester and it got acquitted, the DA'd be on the phone and he'd tell the mother to call me. All kind of stuff like that.''

Faye shakes her head.

``When they couldn't do their job or didn't want to do their job, I was an easy out. Then they didn't have Mama, Grandpa and everybody else dealing with them. Everybody'd be on their doorstep every day, hollering.''

Over the years, Faye has managed to beat or settle all the charges ever brought against her. She estimates there have been 20 civil lawsuits. ``Hell, I had 15 at one time,'' she says.

Plaintiffs have also gone after Howard, alleging he has participated in and funded Faye's activities. She remembers one lawyer in particular ``saying Howard didn't control his woman.'' She's off into fresh peals of laughter. ``Couldn't control his woman!'' she repeats.

Pickett has recovered Underground children in Europe and South Africa. He was involved in the hunt for Amanda Otter, one of Yager's most celebrated cases. At the age of 4, Otter disappeared and grew up in the Underground.

Eighteen now and on her own, she once described her feelings for Yager this way:

``She's just the greatest lady in the world. To help all these children in this situation has to be hard, especially if you get attached to them, and I know she wants to make sure each one of them is safe. She's just, I mean I can't even explain how much I love her.''

Otter will be in Brevard this summer.

``She's coming back here to work all summer with Faye, the culprit,'' Faye laughs. ``Those are the pleasures in life, 'cause now those kids are getting to be older and they call and they come back and say, `Thank you, Faye.' ''

Otter is also on Rubenstein's witness list. There are claims the girl traveled around Europe with Bonnie as an au pair for Randy.

The inn door opens suddenly, and an older woman, smiling and waving, comes in. ``Hi, how are you?'' She's dropping by to enlist Faye's help in Brevard's annual Festival of Trees, a charity event for abused children. Faye greets the woman and asks her to come back later. Of course she'll take part again. She prepares food for the event.

``I've been involved in that kind of thing, been doing that kind of stuff, you know, my light causes, to do what I can to still keep my fingers in without getting investigated,'' she explains. ``Making sandwiches, I'm all right.''

And she's giggling again. She's cracking herself up this afternoon.

Elvis the cockatiel, one of Faye's beloved pets, twitters in his cage near the wall. Faye stands and heads out to the yard to show off another. Budweiser, a cream-colored, 4-month-old, Shepherd-mix puppy sits beneath his favorite tree. He greets Faye, feathery tail waving. She coos to him, squats to stroke his soft fur. He's her new baby.

``I was without a dog and I was lonely,'' she says. Her 17-year-old son recently claimed her previous dog, Jack Daniels. So she went down to the humane society to find a replacement.

``I went in his kennel and he didn't jump on me,'' she says, clearly still touched by the memory. ``His little tail was down and he just had these little sad eyes, and the lady said he was abused terribly. She said, `If you put food out there, he'll just keep eating because he thinks he's got to eat it all. He might not get no more.' So I took him.''

Faye has an affinity for helpless things, or things she thinks are helpless. It started way back when she was a little girl in West Virginia.

``I'm the third oldest of 11 children, a coal miner's daughter,'' she says. ``Stoked the fire at 5 in the morning, got breakfast ready. I pretty much was the main helper in the family, the main caretaker for most of my life.''

The trouble began when she grew up.

``When I got to be 17, I run off and got married to a child molester,'' she says. ``He was the first child molester to ever be booked. In fact before he come along, they didn't consider child molesters dangerous.''

This is the one story Yager knows all the facts of, the one she'll never forget.

``I think she has one bona fide case that was a terrible tragedy: her own victimization,'' says Pickett, the investigator.

Faye Yager's tale begins with a lost child--her own--and in some ways it is as strange and overwhelming as Jeffrey Rubenstein's.

You can lay the whole thing at the feet of Roger Jones. You really ought to. Old Roger Jones, Faye's first husband and the first child molester ever to make the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list.

He's sitting in jail now. Right where he belongs. Faye was 17 and Jones was 21 when they met, working together in the Beckley, W.Va., department store Jones' parents owned.

He was her first boyfriend.

``I'd never dated before,'' she says. ``My parents were very strict on me, and I figured I could [now] do anything I wanted.''

So she married him, despite the host of warning signs she rattles off:

``None of my friends' husbands liked him. He was very anti-social. He always carried candy in his pockets for children. My daddy couldn't stand him. That's who I should have listened to--was my daddy. My mother looked at it as, there's one less child to take care of.''

Faye and Jones soon had a daughter, Michelle. And things were OK until the day Faye says she walked in to find 2-year-old Michelle holding Jones' penis.

Nobody believed her. This was before her makeover as a respected doctor's wife, back when she was still known as Billie Faye, and when she was, she admits, a ``wild woman'' in the courtroom.

Jones told people she was crazy. Delusional. She was hospitalized. Given shock treatments.

``There's three defenses for a child molester: `You're crazy,' `You're a whore' or `You're a lesbian,' and I assure you it doesn't matter what courtroom in America you go in, the child molester is going to say whoever's making the accusation--even if they're right--they're a whore, they're a lesbian or they're crazy. And I was crazy,'' Faye says.

When she got out of the hospital, she divorced Jones, and her bitterest moment--the one loaded with an irony only she perceived--arrived. Because she was ``certifiable now,'' Faye lost custody of Michelle.

She grabbed the girl and ran.

Only when Michelle came down with gonorrhea, did Faye come out of hiding. Surely the courts would believe her now. But they didn't, and she lost custody again.

A little salve came in 1990 when Jones was finally convicted of lewd and lascivious acts with a child--another child, not Michelle.

Faye was, at long last, vindicated. She tasted sweet revenge. And she went on seeking it, case after case. She freely admits her own experience inspired her work in the Underground.

``It touched me because when you watch your child being taken out of your arms and handed to a child molester for court-ordered incest, when you're ordered to have two hours of supervised visits and you know, you see your little girl's face ... and you watch this, it's heartbreaking,'' she says.

So she's risked lawsuits and jail time and harassment, all because of this unspeakable thing that happened to her so long ago.

``You know how kids have that little bright sparkle and everything is wonderful?'' she says, growing still. ``It's taken away. You remember your first kiss and your first dance? These kids don't get that. It's wild. And I had to watch that, court-ordered. I had to post a bond to see my child because I was considered crazy. And all the time he was molesting her and any of her little friends he could get a hold of.''

Michelle's a grown woman now with children of her own. Faye has a relationship with her. Sure, they talk and visit. ``But it's hard,'' Faye says, averting her eyes.

See, the pain and fury are still there.

On an unseasonably warm April afternoon, Phylaine Rubenstein sits in the TV den of her Waterford home, showing off photographs of Randy Rubenstein with the pride of a devoted, and heartbroken, grandmother. Which she is.

``That was taken as a birthday picture. It's the last picture we have of him,'' Phylaine, 61, says, pointing to a cherubic shot of Randy on the wood-paneled wall. ``He was 3 1/2 then. He's 8 1/2 now. It doesn't get any easier.''

Photos of Phylaine's three grandchildren crowd the room. Perched on a floral couch, she thumbs through the diaries she's kept since Randy disappeared. There are seven books, filled with her looping handwriting.

The first entry is on Nov. 17, 1997. ``I am starting this journal on the beginning of the 13th week my grandson, Randy Rubenstein, is missing,'' she writes.

Outside the window, lawns are greening around all the houses on this quiet suburban street. Magnolia trees drip their creamy ruby blossoms onto the road. This is the place Randy was supposed to grow up. This is the house where his grandparents would have doted on him as they dote on his two little cousins living next door.

Jeffrey's brother, Rick--along with his wife, Jeannie and two children--have a backyard that adjoins their parents'. There's a swimming pool at Rick's house, a jungle gym, dogs in both yards.

Phylaine flips through her journal, tears welling in her eyes. She apologizes for the occasional printed outburst of curse words. ``It's just my true feelings,'' she says.

As the 3-year anniversary of Randy's disappearance arrives in 2000, Phylaine writes, ``I've been crying all day.'' Many of her entries end with the hopeful: ``No Randy. Maybe, just maybe, tomorrow.''

When he disappeared, she fell apart. She turned to ``potato chips and Snickers'' for solace. She gained 25 pounds. Now she's lost the weight. She's coping. But it never goes away, this not-knowing. Not knowing how Randy is, not knowing if he's scared or sick or lonely. Not being able to do anything about it.

A little boy called one day two years ago, asking for Chelsea, Rick's daughter, who lives next door. The caller had the wrong Rubenstein phone number. But Phylaine's heart nearly stopped. Her first thought: It was Randy. Randy had somehow gotten to a phone and called Grandma.

Only he hadn't. And she's still waiting. A pillow on the couch is embroidered ``Miracles happen to those who believe.'' Phylaine's struggle is to keep believing.

So is Jeffrey's.

``The biggest thing I've seen is Jeff's withdrawal from everyday life and participation in it,'' says Steve Santangelo, a neighbor and friend. ``He spends so much time on his computer looking for his son. I come over sometimes and drag him out ... Two or three days will go by and he won't go out.''

Randy disappeared on Aug. 25, 1997. On June 8, 1998, the Rubensteins learned where he was. Jeffrey was in Norwich Superior Court that morning, filing a lawsuit against Elaine Dembroff, Bonnie's mother, for aiding Bonnie's flight, when he got the phone call.

``My mom was at the store. I called to check in and she said, `Get back to the store immediately,' '' Jeffrey recalls.

``I walked into the store and there were two producers from NBC `Dateline' there,'' he says. ``They introduced themselves, and they said, `We have a story to tell you.' ''

They'd been looking for Jeffrey since interviewing Bonnie and Randy in Belgium a few months before, while filming a show on Children of the Underground.

``The first thing I said to `Dateline' was, `How did he look? Do you know if he's been to a dentist? Did he have clothes? Has he been to a doctor? Has he gotten his shot for the measles? Is he in school? How is his health?' '' Jeffrey says.

Then he watched the video, and for the first time he heard the accusations of sexual abuse. He watched Bonnie and Randy walk through the streets of Belgium. At Bonnie's prodding, he heard his little boy say, ``I hate Daddy.''

And at the tape's end, when the reporter was questioning Randy directly, Jeffrey had his moment of vindication.

``So what do you wish more than anything else in the world?'' the reporter asked Randy, as the little boy sat in his mother's lap.

``I hate Dad. I want to see Mema,'' came Randy's robotic reply. Mema was Randy's name for Bonnie's mother.

``You hate Dad and you want to see your grandmother,'' the reporter repeated. ``Now, do you think that, or did someone tell you to say that?''

``Mom,'' said Randy shyly.

``Mom what?''

``Told me to say it.''

Jeffrey started crying.

``Fathers who have been tarred and feathered with these allegations can never get over them in their entire lives,'' says Linda Gardner, a Bethlehem, Penn., attorney who specializes in abduction cases. ``It really becomes a situation where once you've been subjected to it, that's it for your life. People are always going to think about it and look at you a little funny.''

Gardner is on the board of directors of The Committee for Missing Children Inc., an international advocacy group for parents working to return their children.

``The fallacy that Faye Yager was operating under was that if a child said it, it has to be true. It's not that children lie all the time, it's that they don't understand the context,'' Gardner says.

At the back of Phylaine's house is a bright sun room, lined with windows. Here, the family contemplates what might be the saddest questions of all: Who has Randy become? How can they ever repair the damage that's been done?

``I don't know how Randy's going to react when he sees me. God knows what Bonnie's told him. He might be scared to death of me,'' Jeffrey says.

He's worked out a transition plan. Upon his return, Randy will live next door with Rick's family. A mother figure might be crucial to him, Jeffrey reasons. Plus, there's Grandma and Grandpa next door. Jeffrey will visit every day, and then--when Randy's ready--he'll move in with Jeffrey.

``I have the utmost faith in the legal system,'' Jeffrey says. In the meantime he has the support of family, friends and complete strangers.

Sam Rubenstein recounts a recent example. ``Several months ago I was in Norwich and I don't know where I went ... ''

``Friendly's,'' says Phylaine.

`` ... to get something to eat,'' Sam continues. ``And as I paid the bill, the lady took the money, but some guy behind her said to me, `Have you found your grandson yet?' I had no clue who he was. And he said, `Tell Jeff I'm praying for him.' ''

Sam, 65, has a filing cabinet full of ``Randy'' folders. He dates and catalogues every media report on his grandson

``Faye Yager has been known to settle on the steps of the courthouse,'' he says.

Jeff perks up. ``She's done that several times.''

Bipin Shah's girls disappeared about the same time as Randy, and for a while the two families worked together. A global settlement that would have returned the girls, Randy and another child to a third family was even briefly considered.

Harry Boardsen, Jeffrey's private eye, knows the ins and outs of this case better than anyone. And he wants to scream them to the world--or at least to the FBI. Early on the morning of April 26, he's eager to dive into the details.

He's an imposing man with a crush-your-hand shake, a drill sergeant's voice and a way of cutting through the ``bull,'' as he puts it.

In the end, Bipin Shah went his own way. But not without Boardsen squeezing a deposition out of him.

His wife, Nancy, pulls a copy of the depostion from one of the many folders sitting on the counter in the couple's sunny Mystic kitchen.

In the deposition, Shah says an FBI agent tipped him off on April 5, 1999, to the whereabouts of his daughters. They were in Lucerne, Switzerland, with their mother. The FBI played a big role in the Shah case, Boardsen says. So why can't they do the same for Jeffrey Rubenstein?

``I spent my first career in law enforcement--18 years--and I never believed until I got in this case that law enforcement could be so nonresponsive,'' Boardsen says. ``It's shaken me. I'm hurt by what law enforcement didn't do. When you're in public service, you have to reach down and help people.''

The quest for Randy Rubenstein quit being just another ``case'' for Boardsen a long time ago. He's logged 4,000 pro bono hours.

He has a take on why the FBI won't help. Bipin Shah is a powerful banking magnate, with the resources and influence to put a fire under the FBI and to launch a federal grand jury probe against Faye. Jeffrey Rubenstein is a small-town guy, working in his dad's clothing store.

``There's a saying in this business: No money, no kid,'' Boardsen says. ``The Rubensteins are good people. They've never been involved in law enforcement before. They're middle America.''

They're certainly no match for Faye Yager. Even Shah had a tough time of it. In his deposition, he testifies to spending $3.2 million of his own money in the quest for his girls. He accounts for $2.2 million of it. But he wasn't made to answer the question Boardsen wants answered: How much did he pay Faye Yager?

Boardsen deduces it must be $1 million. ``Do the math,'' he says.

Whatever the deal, Shah dropped his lawsuit against Yager, and the grand jury probe was dissolved.

Michael Wolf, special agent in charge of the FBI's New Haven office, defends the agency's actions in the Rubenstein case.

``Investigation conducted to date has been extensive, to include covering numerous extraterritorial leads in many countries, that have been time consuming and complicated with many bureaucratic obstacles,'' he says in a written statement, adding that the agency is currently pursuing ``many active and viable leads.''

As for the prospect of arresting Faye, Wolf writes: ``Presently, there is insufficient probable cause to warrant the arrest of anyone, other than Bonnie Rubenstein, for a federal violation in this investigation.''

Seeking more leverage, the Rubensteins in 2000 wrote Sen. Christopher Dodd, who responded and sent letters to former FBI Director Louis Freeh urging action. Most recently, Dodd sent a May 8 letter to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, again urging action in the Rubenstein case.

``We've done a number of letters to the Justice Department, and we've been in touch with the Department of State as well to see what can be done in terms of their efforts to try to get more coordination between the FBI and the State Department. What we've been concerned about is that one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing,'' says Dodd spokesman Marvin Fast.

Fast said Dodd's office wants to arrange a meeting with the Rubensteins soon to ``brainstorm'' the case.

The underlying problem, Boardsen believes, is that Yager is politically well-connected in Atlanta. She has powerful friends who shield her.

When Bonnie first took off with Randy for Florida, Boardsen followed her down. This was after he obtained a warrant from the Waterford police--another agency Jeffrey is suing for, he says, negligence and failing to protect his custodial rights in the early days of Randy's disappearance.

It was Boardsen who rushed to Bonnie's sister's Florida condominium in 1997 when he learned Bonnie and Randy were there.

They must have just left. Some of Randy's clothes and toys were still lying around. ``When I missed the baby by hours, it killed me,'' Boardsen says. ``You don't know how much sleep I've lost.''

He believes Bonnie intended to relocate to Florida and fight for custody there, but Jeffrey beat her to the punch and obtained an order from a Florida court, directing her to return Randy.

That's when, according to Boardsen, Bonnie disappeared into the Underground.

In her April 30, 2001, deposition, Elaine Dembroff, Bonnie's mother, testified that Greg Anderson, a Miami attorney, hooked Bonnie up with Yager.

``Absolutely not,'' says Anderson. ``I absolutely never even knew of Faye Yager. I had read stories about her, but I did not know of her and didn't have any reference or introduction to her.''

New London attorney Gil Shasha has represented both Bonnie and Elaine. He represented Elaine when Jeffrey was suing her. Boardsen says the suit against Elaine was dropped because Jeffrey was trying to work out an amicable deal with Bonnie. Shasha says Bonnie called his office to discuss the deal, but he never called her. He doesn't know where she is.

The dead ends and no-shows don't surprise Boardsen. This case has been like screaming into a void. But come July, he's going to take another swing at Faye Yager--with or without the help of law enforcement.

``I'm not going away,'' he says. ``What can they do to me? Nothing. I have every answer on this case. There's no question, I can't answer.''

How about what went wrong in the Rubenstein marriage?

It would take more than Harry Boardsen's insights to explain this one. Jeffrey will lead you through a long, ugly string of incidents. There's enough fodder for a mental health expert to write a book. A series of books.

But, if Jeffrey's version of events is to be believed, it all boils down to this: Bonnie never properly separated herself from Elaine, and Elaine was hell-bent on making trouble in this marriage.

Neither Bonnie nor Elaine could be contacted to offer their version of events.

Bonnie worked as a counselor at the Stonington Youth Services Bureau. She made numerous allegations of abuse against Jeffrey during their short marriage, but never provided evidence--and no court ever deemed her words credible.

Jeffrey flatly denied all her allegations, and he hammers home again and again what he considers the most crucial point: There was never any mention of sexual abuse until after Bonnie hooked up with Faye Yager.

Jeffrey and Bonnie met as teenagers, working at Marcus Jeans. They remained friends, dating on and off, over the years, and Jeffrey proposed despite his misgivings about her family.

Bonnie's father, Reubin Dembroff, a decorated Korean War veteran, committed suicide in 1985, after robbing a Thompson bank and leading police on a chase. He was later accused of two other bank holdups in Connecticut.

Elaine Dembroff, a longtime New London elementary school teacher, was fired in 1995 following a lengthy investigation into allegations of misconduct including charges that she had verbally abused her second-grade students.

She denied the charges.

``I firmly believe that Bonnie was verbally and mentally abused by her mother her entire life,'' Jeffrey says.

Bonnie's and Jeffrey's engagement escalated matters. Jeffrey remembers the first blow: When he came to seek Elaine's blessing before proposing, she demanded to know what size diamond he had bought for Bonnie. Then she said it was too small.

Two weeks before the wedding, Jeffrey met with his rabbi to talk about canceling. ``I should have run,'' he says.

Bonnie herself sought a restraining order against her mother in October 1993, when Bonnie was eight months pregnant, claiming Elaine had been harassing her and Jeffrey for two years.

``She has made false complaints to the Waterford police that my husband was beating and abusing me and has come upon our property and my husband's place of business shouting loud and abusive obscenities and has refused to leave until police were called,'' Bonnie claimed in a court application.

Randy's birth gave them all a rare shot of joy, but the feuding quickly resumed.

On the day of the baby's bris ceremony, when he was to be circumcised eight days after his birth, Jeffrey, Bonnie, and their rabbi huddled in the bathroom, arguing fiercely. The ceremony was set to begin in minutes.

``All the guests were here ... and Bonnie and I and the rabbi are in the bathroom at the end of the house. The rabbi's in between the two of us and we're having a heated discussion over the naming of the godparents,'' Jeffrey says.

Bonnie wanted her sister to be godmother. Jeffrey didn't, explaining that Jackie, too, had caused ``chaos in our marriage.''

``The rabbi said, `That's it!' '' Jeffrey recalls. `` `Her sister's the godmother.' When the rabbi said that, I didn't say a word.'' Later he asked the rabbi why.

``He said, `Because I knew that if I said she was the godmother, you would respect my decision, you wouldn't go any further and it would be settled. Had I favored with you, I knew that the trouble with the other end would never stop.' ''

It never stopped anyway.

``When I filed for divorce, the very first papers that Bonnie received in our divorce were ... a restraining order prohibiting her from removing Randy from the state of Connecticut,'' Jeffrey says.

A week earlier he had found Randy's and Bonnie's bags packed and hidden in a closet, along with plane tickets to Florida.

At first, Bonnie and he were granted joint custody of Randy. But the two were unable to work out a peaceable arrangement. In particular, Jeffrey says, he objected to Bonnie's practice of leaving Randy alone with her mother. He obtained a court order forbidding Bonnie from doing so.

The practice allegedly persisted. The judge presiding over the case also notes that Bonnie failed to honor the court-ordered visitation schedule, refused to show up for court dates, and allegedly attempted to poison the relationship between Randy and Jeffrey.

In September 1997 a Connecticut judge awarded temporary sole custody of Randy to Jeffrey.

So Bonnie fled to Florida, according to court documents. On Sept. 23, 1997, a Palm Beach County, Fla., court directed sheriffs to pick up Randy and return him to Jeffrey.

Only Bonnie fled again, this time much farther and with Faye Yager's help.

As for Faye, she's learned how to ride these things out. She's had to, living the life she has.

In the wake of Roger Jones, she became a fighter. A damn good one. Even her critics begrudgingly admire her spirit, her ferocity.

Faye Yager may have been knocked down a few times, but honey, she's never been knocked out.

And she knows what she knows. The court system does wrong by molested children. She's seen it happen again and again. Why, she was jailed herself for refusing to turn Michelle over to that molester Jones.

``I remember crying myself to sleep,'' she says. ``I remember they gave me coins to use at the phone, and when I woke up the coins were gone. And I remember crying to the bailiff, the jailer, about my coins being stolen. And she said, `Well where'd you think you were at? In church?' ''

She's off into fresh laughter. No one could ever accuse Faye of not seeing the humor in things.

Seriously though, the part she thinks people miss is this: Little kids love abusive parents. What choice do they have? ``They're like dogs,'' she says. ``You can abuse a dog, and he'll still love you.''

So call her what you will. Faye Yager doesn't care. She's heard it all before. Walking across the flowering yard, in this beautiful place she's created, she's at peace. As peaceful as it ever gets for a fighter.

She waves goodbye and follows little Budweiser into the driveway. It's time to bring him inside. Nightfall is coming in the mountains.

It's coming in Connecticut, too.

Jeffrey Rubenstein is probably alone at his computer, obsessing, on the hunt. Harry Boardsen is sharpening his saber. And Phylaine may be mumbling a prayer right now, perhaps writing the same words in her journal again: